mHealth intervention "ImTeCHO" to improve delivery of maternal, neonatal, and child care services-A cluster-randomized trial in tribal areas of Gujarat, India.

Background: The coverage of community-based maternal, neonatal, and child health (MNCH) services remains low, especially in hard-to-reach areas. We evaluated the effectiveness of a mobile-phone-and web-based application, Innovative Mobile-phone Technology for Community Health Operations (ImTeCHO), as a job aid to the government's Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) and Primary Health Center (PHC) staff to improve coverage of MNCH services in rural tribal communities of Gujarat, India.

Methods And Findings: This open cluster-randomized trial was conducted in 22 PHCs in six tribal blocks of Bharuch and Narmada districts in India.

The role of an mHealth intervention in improving knowledge and skills of accredited social health activists in tribal areas of Gujarat, India: a nested study within an implementation research trial.

Aim: To evaluate the effectiveness of an mHealth intervention in improving knowledge and skills of accredited social health activists in improving maternal, newborn and child health care in India.

Methods: This was a nested cross-sectional study within a cluster randomised controlled trial. The intervention was a mobile phone application which has inbuilt health education videos, algorithms to diagnose complications and training tools to educate accredited social health activists.

Cluster randomized trial of a mHealth intervention "ImTeCHO" to improve delivery of proven maternal, neonatal, and child care interventions through community-based Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) by enhancing their motivation and strengthening supervision in tribal areas of Gujarat, India: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

Background: To facilitate the delivery of proven maternal, neonatal, and child health (MNCH) services, a new cadre of village-based frontline workers, called the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs), was created in 2005 under the aegis of the National Rural Health Mission in India. Evaluations have noted that coverage of selected MNCH services to be delivered by the ASHAs is low. Reasons for low coverage are inadequate supervision and support to ASHAs apart from insufficient skills, poor quality of training, and complexity of tasks to be performed.

Development and formative evaluation of an innovative mHealth intervention for improving coverage of community-based maternal, newborn and child health services in rural areas of India.

Background: A new cadre of village-based frontline health workers, called Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs), was created in India. However, coverage of selected community-based maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) services remains low.

Objective: This article describes the process of development and formative evaluation of a complex mHealth intervention (ImTeCHO) to increase the coverage of proven MNCH services in rural India by improving the performance of ASHAs.